What the Bible says about light and seed

The True Light "In him, (the Lord Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world,…the world didn’t recognize him." John 1:4,9.

The Good Seed and the Weeds “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”Matthew 13:24,25.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Column One: Mahmoud Abbas and other Soviet ghosts

The revelation of Abbas’s KGB service requires us to
recognize that the Soviets’ long game of subversion continues on today.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
(photo credit:REUTERS)

Channel 1’s report Wednesday that in 1983,
current Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas
served as a KGB agent is hardly the story of the year, but it does
remind us of certain half-forgotten facts about the Cold War that are
becoming ever more relevant today.

The PLO’s close and servile
relationship with the KGB was first exposed in a systematic way in 1987,
with the publication of Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy
Chief, the exposé of Soviet and Romanian Cold War operations written by
former Romanian intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa. Pacepa, who
defected to the US in 1978 after serving as the head of the DIE –
Romania’s KGB – was the highest ranking intelligence officer from the
Soviet bloc to ever defect.

Pacepa explained how Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, at
the direction of Moscow, convinced Yasser Arafat to employ political
warfare, centered on phony protestations that he had abandoned
terrorism, to weaken the West’s resolve to defend itself and to cause
Israel to doubt its own legitimacy.

Wednesday’s Channel 1 report
on Abbas was based on new revelations from the Mitrokhin Archive.
Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB who surreptitiously
copied KGB documents for many years and hid his copies in his home. In
1991 Mitrokhin defected to Britain and took his archive of 25,000
copies of documents with him.

In 2004, the second volume of his
edited archive was published. The volume, titled, The World Was Going
Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, focused on the
KGB’s efforts to use the Third World as a strategic weapon in its battle
against the West. The volume devotes two chapters to the KGB’s
campaign against Israel.

Mitrokhin revealed that for the KGB,
Israel was a target of subversion second only in importance to the US.
The KGB fielded multiple political agents on the Israeli Left and
multiple Palestinian agents in the PLO’s terrorist nexus.

According to the Channel 1 report, Abbas began his official service for the KGB in 1983.

In truth his KGB ties were already longstanding by 1983.

In
1982 Abbas received a doctorate from the Patrice Lumumba University –
or KGB U – in Moscow. According to KGB defectors, 90 percent of the
university’s faculty and staff received their paychecks from the KGB.
Its purpose was to train KGB agents from the developing world, including
terrorists. Abbas’s fellow alumni included master terrorist Carlos the
Jackal and future Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Abbas
received a doctorate for a thesis denying the Holocaust. That is, he
used the cover of academia to vilify the Jewish state and deny Jewish
history and suffering – a practice that has been his stock in trade in
trade ever since.

Rather than devote his energies to murdering
Israelis, along the lines of the subversive program Ceausescu presented
to Arafat, Abbas’s main focus was the subversion of the European and
the Israeli Left.

Until the mid-1970s, Arab terrorists were
unable to make inroads in Israel because there were no significant
political forces in Israeli society that questioned the justice and
morality of the state or saw the PLO as anything other than a terrorist
organization bent on the annihilation of Israel and the massacre of its
citizens.

The situation changed with the rise of the Likud and
the Right to power in 1977. As the Likud supplanted Labor as the
largest party in Israel, the far Left became more susceptible to
subversion.

Abbas focused his efforts on developing ties to the
Israeli far Left. His efforts culminated in the 1993 Oslo peace deal
which Abbas negotiated with Israeli leftist activists affiliated with
then-foreign minister Shimon Peres through his deputy Yossi Beilin.

The
PLO’s success in convincing the Rabin- Peres government that it had
abandoned its goal of annihilating Israel came two years after the
demise of the Soviet Union. In other words, the KGB’s campaign of
anti-Western subversion outlived the Soviet Union.

Indeed it
carries on with ever greater force and consequence. Today, the
subversive campaigns that first bore fruits in the Vietnam War have
brought about a situation where increasingly, Western elites cannot
accept the basic morality of their societies.

Consider the case
of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Last month Kaepernick caused a
public outcry when he refused to stand up for the US national anthem at
the beginning of a football game. Kaepernick defended himself by
arguing that the US is immoral. “I am not going to stand up to show
pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of
color,” he said.

Rather than defend the US against his assault
and insist that its symbols required respect, President Barack Obama
said only that Kaepernick had a right to his opinion.

Then there
is Germany. This week Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party came in
third place in regional elections on Merkel’s home turf behind the
far-right, anti-immigration AfD party.

Merkel’s political collapse owes entirely to her refusal to budge on her open border policies.

That
policy enabled more than a million, predominantly Muslim, immigrants
to stream into Germany last year. An additional 300,000 are expected
this year.

Merkel’s associates claim that she operates under the
conviction that Germany’s Nazi past precludes any attempt to protect
German society from Muslim immigrants. For Merkel, Germany is
inherently immoral and therefore has no right to defend its identity or
culture.

The sense among Western elites that Western culture
and history as a whole are morally impaired has dampened their concern
about their future. This diminished commitment to securing their
societies into the future is most apparent in the West’s fertility
rates, which have been below replacement rate for more than a decade.
Last year for the first time, deaths in Europe outnumbered births.

The
situation is similarly fraught on the other side of the former Iron
Curtain. Russian society was economically and culturally broken by the
Soviet defeat in the Cold War and by its post- Cold War leadership’s
inability to present a life-affirming vision for a new Russia.

In
some ways, post-Cold War Russia is the mirror image of the subverted
West. While Western leftists insist on adopting the socialist economics
of swelled welfare states, which given demographic realities are
unsustainable in the long-term, to expiate their guilt for capitalism
and colonialism, Russia’s leaders have largely abandoned their people
to their fate.

Russia spends a bit more than a third of what OECD countries spend on public health. And the low investment shows.

According
to the World Health Organization, a third of all deaths in Russia in
2012 were caused by alcohol. Russian male life expectancy is 64 – lower
than it was a hundred years ago.

Drug addiction rates are soaring, as are HIV infection rates.

Like
the Europeans, Russians have lost interest in the future, which
increasingly will not include a Russia. With fertility rates below
replacement levels, the UN estimates that by 2060, Russia’s working age
population will have shrunk by 15 percent.

Due to the scarcity
of workers, like Europe, Russia is experiencing massive, predominantly
Muslim immigration. Russian immigration levels are second only to the
US. In response, xenophobia is a large and growing social force in
Russia.

According to David Satter, author of the recently
released, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to
Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin, Russia’s gloomy
prospects, reinforced by the long-term outlook for reduced oil and gas
prices, have brought about a situation where President Vladimir Putin
and his associates do not think about the long-term future of their
country. Their international considerations, specifically, are based on
their assessments of immediate potential payoffs.

Since the
Russian leadership doesn’t suffer from the civilizational neurosis the
Soviets inflicted on the West, like the Soviet leaders before him,
Putin’s short-term game empowers him to adopt policies with potentially
high short-term payoffs regardless of the long-term dangers they
create. Russia’s policies in Syria and toward Iran are case in point.

On
the other side of the divide in Europe, the elites devote their
remaining days in power to absolving themselves of imperialist and
capitalist guilt. To this end, they have adopted the causes of those
they falsely believe were most victimized by their predecessors.

The same is true, albeit to a lesser degree, in the US.

This then brings us back to KGB agent Abbas and his target, Israel.

Against
great odds, and at a steep price, over the past 10 years Israeli
society stopped listening to the voices on the Left parroting Abbas’s
lies that Israel was born in sin, as a Western colonialist implant.
Given the stakes, most Israelis today also have come to realize that
our national self-confidence is a vital component of our long-term
survival.

This understanding, along with a clear-eyed assessment
of what drives our interlocutors in Moscow, Paris, New York and
Brussels, must inform our foreign policy in the coming years.

When
faced with foreign governments whose societies lack long-term
prospects, Israel needs to put aside its yearning for long-term peace
and stability and focus on short-term cooperative ties. It must also
recognize that our partners’ interests are subject to change at a
moment’s notice.

The revelation of Abbas’s KGB service requires
us to recognize that the Soviets’ long game of subversion continues on
today. Whether or not Western societies persevere and reject the
Soviets’ central contention that they are unworthy of survival is not
for Israel to decide. So, too, Israel will not convince the Russians to
embrace a future based on freedom and the sanctity of life.

All
we can do is wish them the best and play the short-term game with them
– while keeping our long-term interests front and center in our minds.

A Christmas Reflection from the Light Seed

This is a Christmas message that I repost every year because of its timelessness. I hope that it will bless you and that the seeds of love, truth, hope and joy planted in your heart by the Lord will flourish as Aaron´s almond rod of authority and service and nourish the hungry and thirsty around us.

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I claim no right as an author. I didn't create the mind, my brain, my hands, nor any of my senses through which I perceive the world around me. Therefore, I invite anybody if you see any benefit or blessing in the posts, to print, reproduce or distribute the contents of this blog I wrote personally. Jesus said: "Freely you have received, freely give". John the Baptist said: "One can receive only what has been given him from above". I would suggest you ask for spiritual discernment with checking in the Word of God what is right, true, noble, pure, lovely, beneficial as coming from God. I am just offering and sharing free of any restrictions the things that I deem worthy of passing on to any one willing to spend a little time and walk with me along life's highway so we can learn and grow together. Give thanks to and Praise God for the wonderful things he has done.

The Joshua Tree - An original parable/allegory by this blogger.

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God (Genesis 21:33). Here is old Abraham just planting a tree and living by his well. Why are we told this? It is symbolic of what is taking place in his heart and life. The tree immediately brings to mind Psalm 1, which says the man of God will be like a tree planted by rivers of living water, bringing forth its fruit in season. Here is a life that is fruitful, that is concerned about those immediately around and is pouring out blessing into their lives and hearts. Excerpts from Ray Stedman´s devotion: "This Thirsty World" https://www.raystedman.org/daily-devotions/genesis-12to25/this-thirsty-world

Original Love Poems by this Blogger

Excellent Free Bible Software

Now you can download an excellent Bible software on your PC and/or your USB flash drive. It contains easy to navigate and efficient interface, free add-ons modules, Bibles in English, foreign languages, Dictionaries, Commentaries, everything you need to help you study the Bible.

Testimony/Sermon of an Abortion Survivor

SUICIDE WATCH

I am sure most of you have known at some time in your life a person who wanted or attempted to end their life or succeeded in doing so. Personally, I have known a number of such people. I, myself had such an episode as an adolescent.

More and more I am reading and hearing about people young, old, male, female, gender and age don´t matter that add their lives to this problem of epidemic proportion in our society. Whatever the cause, we can all do something however small to save lives.

No need to have a psych. degree or to be licensed. An understanding heart, a listening ear is sometimes all that it takes to help weaker, more sensitive people overcome the hopelessness that drives fellow human beings to discard the gift of human life.

Please, take a few minutes to read below the few examples and testimonies about suicide. And please pass it on, if that´s all you feel inclined to do. Thank you.

HE INVITES SUICIDE JUMPERS FOR A CUP OF TEA

Don Ritchie moved to a house outside Sydney, Australia, for the clifftop view. But soon he was stopping suicides by inviting potential jumpers inside for a cup of tea.

Don Ritchie has been awarded a medal for bravery and an Order of Australia (the nation’s second highest honor) for averting hundreds of would-be suicides by approaching people and offering them a cup of tea. ‘I used to sell kitchen scales and bacon cutters,’ he says. Now, ‘I’m trying to sell people life.’